SPP 1285: Semiconductor Spintronics

随着结构尺寸的逐渐减小，量子效应将变得越来越重要，半导体器件的功能原理在未来20年内将发生巨大的变化。半导体行业预见到了这场即将到来的革命，这场革命直接源于摩尔定律。然而，到目前为止，还没有人知道未来半导体量子器件的功能原理。传统的半导体器件使用的是电荷的精确控制。但电荷可能不是量子器件的最佳实体，因为电子波函数的空间部分的相干长度非常短。除了电荷，电子还有一个自旋。自旋波函数比空间波函数稳定几个数量级，因此更适合于量子器件。此外，用于转换自旋取向的能量比库仑充电能量要小得多，这可以缓解当今半导体器件的发热问题。

The functional principle of semiconductor devices will change dramatically in the next 20 years, since quantum effects will become more and more predominant with the progressive decrease of structure size. Semiconductor industry foresees this upcoming revolution, which follows directly from Moore's law. However, until now nobody knows the functional principle of future semiconductor quantum devices. Traditional semiconductor devices utilise the precise control of the electrical charge. But the electrical charge might not be the best entity for quantum devices, since the coherence length of the spatial part of the electron wave function is very short. Besides the charge the electron also possesses a spin. The spin wave function is by orders of magnitude more stable than the spatial wave function and thereby better suited for quantum devices. Additionally, the energy for switching the spin orientation is much smaller than the Coulomb charging energy, which can reduce the heating problem of today semiconductor devices.